In Dublin City in 1913 The boss was rich and the poor were slaves The women working and the children hungry Then on came Larkin like a mighty wave The Dublin Lock-out was a major industrial dispute which developed between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in Ireland’s capital city of Dublin. The dispute broke out on 26 th August 1913, and lasted almost 6 months until the 18th January, 1914 and is often viewed as the most significant industrial dispute in Irish history. Central to the dispute was the workers’ right to unionise. The workers in question were those on minimum wages, living in very poor conditions and were barely paid sufficiently to feed their large families. A third of the city’s teeming population inhabited the centre city tenement slums. 30,000 families lived in 15,000 tenements. The infant mortality rate amongst the poor was 142 per 1,000 births. There were no medical services and children and women bore the brunt of the poverty. The most prevalent disease in the Dublin slums at this time was tuberculosis (TB) which spread through tenements very quickly and caused many deaths. A report published in 1912 claimed that TB - related deaths in Ireland were fifty per cent higher than in England, Scotland and Wales. The start of the twentieth century saw a rise in militant nationalism throughout the country but especially in Dublin. Irish leaders were of the opinion that our problems could only be solved by taking charge of our own affairs. Home Rule was promised by the British Government where Irish affairs would once again after one hundred years be controlled from the capital. In the meantime social unrest was becoming widespread and led to the increase of labour agitators who urged the workers to unite and fight for their rights. Two of the most prominent of these were James Connolly and James Larkin. James Connolly had seen for himself the poverty in Glasgow where his 1
own daughter died at a very young age from TB. He returned to Dublin where he began holding meetings with the new breed of politician which was emerging from Nationalist organisations. He emigrated to New York where he was instrumental in establishing one of the earliest Unions in the city. He returned to Dublin around 1912 to find the situation a lot more volatile. To protect the workers he set up the Citizen’s Army and became its leader. High levels of violence offered further evidence of the demoralised state of many of the population. It was in many ways an unlikely seed-bed for trade unionism. The social system was typified by insecurity of employment, personal daily struggles for survival and the frequent indifference of the longer established, but conservative, craft trade unions. The New Unionism, marked by its organisation of the unskilled and socialist zeal, had briefly flourished in Dublin in the 1890’s. But the odds were heavily stacked against permanent success - many union organisations had become moribund. Prior to the advent of trade unionism in Ireland unskilled workers lacked any form of representation. There were many more unskilled labourers in Dublin than there were jobs for them. The workers had to compete with one another for work on a daily basis, the job then going to whoever agreed to work for the lowest wages. It was at this point that another Labour leader began to agitate for the rights of the workers. His name was James Larkin and he is remembered with great esteem by all Trade Unionists in the country to this day. A statue of him commands a prominent place in the main thoroughfare of the city. His first experience with trade unionism in Ireland had been in 1907 when he was sent to Belfast as local leader of the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) after working as a docker in Liverpool. Disagreement with the NUDL’s Liverpool Executive led to Larkin’s suspension and the launch in 1909 of a Dublin based union for unskilled 2
workers, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. From the beginning the new union enunciated in its rule book a wide programme of industrial and political agitation to change society in the interests of the Irish working class. This was a direct challenge to employers who treated workers as they saw fit. The employer’s response was immediate. Any person joining a trade union was sacked. Foremost among the employers opposed to trade unionism in Ireland was William Martin Murphy. Murphy was a highly successful businessman from Co. Cork. He was Chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company, owner of Clery’s department store, the Imperial Hotel, he also, controlled the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Evening Herald and was a major shareholder in the B&I Line. He was a prominent nationalist and a former Home Rule MP in Westminster. He was known as a kind and charitable man, regarded as a good employer. Employees worked up to 17 hours a day and a harsh discipline regime and informer culture operated in his companies. He was vehemently opposed to trade unions and in particular to Larkin whom he saw as a dangerous revolutionary. In 1913 Murphy presided over a meeting of 300 employers - at which a collective response to the rise of trade unionism was agreed upon. He and his colleagues were determined not to allow the ITGWU to unionise the Dublin workforce. On 15th August, 1913 he sacked 40 workers he suspected were member of the ITGWU followed by another 300 over the next number of days. The resulting dispute was the most severe in Ireland’s history. Employers in Dublin engaged in a lockout of workers -employing blackleg labour from Britain and elsewhere in Ireland. The Church supported the employers during the dispute - condemning Larkin as a socialist revolutionary. A scheme was introduced whereby Children of the Irish strikers would be temporarily looked after by British trade unionists was also, blocked by the Roman Catholic Church. Notably, Guinness, the largest employer and biggest exporter in Dublin, 3
refused to lock out its workforce. It refused to join Murphy’s group. It expected its workers not to strike in sympathy and six who did were dismissed. 400 of its staff were already ITGWU members so it had a working relationship with the union. The strikers used mass pickets and intimidation against the strike breakers. The Dublin Metropolitan Police in turn baton charged worker’s rallies. The attack on a rally on Sackville Street now known as O’Connell Street in 1913 caused the deaths of two workers. Another worker Alice Brady was later shot dead by a strike breaker while bringing home a food parcel from the union office while Michael Byrne, an ITGWU official from Dun Laoghaire died shortly after being tortured in a police cell. Between 1911 and 1913 the Union’s membership rose from 4,000 to 10,000. This did not go unnoticed by employers who soon became alarmed by the rise in popularity of the new trade union. Both Connolly and Larkin were gifted orators and became known for their fiery speeches on the streets of Dublin. By the end of September 1913 over 20,000 were locked out. Under the auspices of the ITGWU the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU) was founded in Dublin in September 1911 as a general union for all women workers. Delia Larkin sister of James Larkin was the Union’s first General Secretary. Its foundation had the active support of nationalist feminists. Two other women Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Constance Markievicz were platform speakers with James Larkin. Countess Markievicz secured her place in history when she was elected as an MP to the British Parliament - the first woman to do so. As a member of the Republican movement she did not take her seat. In 1908 a foundation of the Irishwomen’s Franchise League (IWFL) as a militant suffrage society was led by a group of women Hanna Sheehy 4
Skeffington, Margaret Cousins, Cissie Cahalan, Kathleen Shannon and many others. The first woman President of the Irish National Teacher’s Organisation was Catherine Mahon from Co. Tipperary in 1912. Women who thought that they had something to offer Irish society were putting themselves forward and found trust in the general population. During the 1913 lockout, the ITGWU took responsibility for the dependants of thousands of locked-out workers. Meals were prepared by out of work members, their families and supporters. Dublin feminists joined this work. For six months the Lockout affected tens of thousands of Dublin’s workers and their families, with Larkin portrayed as the villain in the Irish newspapers. The Lockout eventually proved too much for the poverty stricken workers. Most workers many on the brink of starvation went back to work. But the situation had changed dramatically. Workers began to realise that there was strength in numbers and that events like the 1913 Lockout would never happen again. The legacy of 1913 is in fact a marvellous victory drawn from the jaws of defeat. The trade union and labour movement was soon to become an essential and important part of the new state. James Connolly continued his campaign for the working class of Dublin which led him to join the Nationalist movement which led to the 1916 Rising. This Rising though a military failure led to Irish Independence after five years. James Connolly, however, did not live to see this new dawn as he was executed by British soldiers for taking part in the Rising. He too, has a monument erected to his memory in a prominent place in the city. The lessons we must learn from 1913 is that solidarity between Trade Unions - national and international is extremely important. We must commit ourselves to trade union activity not just trade union membership. 5
The way forward is not privatisation, deregulation or public spending cuts. The values of the trade union movement are seen as old fashioned or belonging to another era. In fact these values were never more necessary as now if all our countries are to win back control of our economy, social and political affairs.
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